If there is anything that I always forget to do, it’s maintain my contact list. For years, I tried to keep a current list, but my family or friends would move, their address and phone numbers would change – and inevitably my entire mobile address book would be completely outdated. There has never been a very good way of “automatically” updating contact lists. However, now people willingly submit and update their own contact details online, so what better way to maintain an updated contact list than to extract and sync it all from Facebook?

I decided to search for the best mobile address book applications that could automatically connect to and sync up with all of my Facebook friends. The following four applications from the Android Market are the best apps to accomplish this amazing feat of contact automation.

EboBirthday

My favorite contacts application, even though it’s the simplest, is EboBirthday. Keeping track of birthdays is something that I’m notoriously bad at. I forget my own birthday, let alone my brother’s or sister’s. Thankfully, EboBirthday comes to the rescue with an app that can import birthday information from your Facebook or Google contacts, or from any previous birthday lists you might have been trying to maintain.

The beauty of this is that it acts like a central repository for all of your birthday data. Once you’re connected to Facebook, you’ll never forget another birthday again. On the downside, not everyone is completely honest about their listed birthday on Facebook. So, for those contacts, you’ll probably have to update manually.

Download EboBirthday with this QR code:

PicDial for Facebook

Remembering birthdays is nice, but the most valuable part of being plugged into Facebook is that it’s essentially a database of contact information that auto-updates itself. For that reason, it is the best source to sync up to if you want to maintain your phone’s contact list without any effort on your part. A very cool app for doing this is called PicDial. PicDial can pull in friend data from either Facebook or MySpace.

It can also automatically use your own profile picture on Facebook for an image to display on your friend’s phone when you call them.

Once all of your friends’ data is uploaded, including phone numbers, email addresses and any other contact information they’ve offered, you will finally have the following quick-dial pad. It’s like a speed-dial app that lets you call people instantly by just tapping on their picture.

Download PicDial with the following QR code.

ContApps

One of my favorite apps to connect my Facebook contacts with my Android address book is ContApps. It not only pulls in photos and contact info from your Facebook friends list, but it’ll also show you your friends’ latest Facebook status update as well. The main page looks a lot like PicDial’s speed-dial screen, but I found that the ContApps list wasn’t quite as well organized or easy to navigate.

What I liked the most about this app was the individual screen for each friend. Everything you need is all in one place, the person’s birthday, work email, home email, IM contact and phone number.

The buttons at the bottom are pretty cool. Social feeds doesn’t quite work yet as far as I can tell, but the “Google It” button will Google the person’s name – so you can view Internet details about the person whenever you like. From reviews I’ve seen, it also shows you the location of your friends and it pulls in Twitter data as well. As I mentioned above, you can view the person’s current Facebook status by tapping on their picture.

Overall, I think this is a useful app and goes a long way toward connecting the Android address book with popular social networks. If you want to give it a shot and use it to import your Facebook contacts, you can download it with the following QR code.

AddressBook for Android

By far, my favorite app to connect all of my favorite social networks with my Android address book is, aptly named, AddressBook for Android. After you download this app, you’ll be prompted to download all of the additional plug-ins that you want – such as one to connect to Facebook and another to connect to Twitter or YouTube.

Once your contacts are imported from those social networks, they’re displayed in a nice looking contacts list. This is meant to replace the standard Android address book, and throughout you’ll find all sorts of other features incorporated into it, such as a button for an emergency number (which you can program) and a one-touch connection to look up local movie listings.

I really like this app because it’s clean, fast, and it just works as advertised. You can add-on the features you want, or just leave off the ones you don’t.

Download AddressBook with the following QR code.

So, give a few of these address books a test drive and import your contacts into your Android mobile phone. Once you do, you’ll never have to worry about keeping track of contact details or making changes. Finally, we’ve entered a world where information gets automatically updated for you.

Did you pick any of these apps? Do you know of any others that you like more? Share your insight in the comments section below.

I tried playing with AddressBook in the past, it's a very nice app but was really slow for me, and occasionally crashed. I'm now using Contapps which is so far seems to be the most suitable one for me.

Ryan has a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering. He's worked 13 years in automation engineering, 5 years in IT, and now is an Apps Engineer. A former Managing Editor of MakeUseOf, he's spoken at national conferences on Data Visualization and has been featured on national TV and radio.